Above, you'll find a room full of Memphis furniture (above) from the 1980s. That was the trendy furniture style of its day, the thing we 80s people all longed to have. Gee, 30 years later some of the pieces look like shag cat toys, and a whole room full of it seems like clutter. Even so, I retain an affection for it. Maybe it's worth examining to see where the movement went wrong.
First, lets talk about what they did right. How do you like these Cliff Sterrett / Picasso-style vaces (above)? Probably flowers didn't look good in them, but who cares? They look great!
And the iconic bookshelf (above) by Milan designer/Memphis co-founder Ettore Sottsass (yes, that was his real name) was marvelous. Everybody in the 80s wanted one.
The problem was that, although it looked good as a stand-alone, it didn't integrate into a whole furnished room very well. The fact is that nobody had an idea of what a Memphis-style room should look like.
That's a photo of Sottsass above. Yikes! He doesn't look very happy.
I suspect that the man had enormous problems with production and quality control. I'm guessing that people who did knock-offs of his ideas made a lot more money than he did.
Some of his studio's designs were misfires (above)...
...and some (above) looked downright uncomfortable. That's okay...nobody bats a thousand. If he'd had more time to iron out the kinks I think Sottsass would would have dominated furniture design well into the late 90s, but time was running out.
Memphis was grounded in 80s rock culture but rock was quickly giving way to hip-hop and that movement had no use for Memphis influences like Matisse and Picasso, Miro and Leger, Klee, Stella, Gris and Mondrian.
Boy, poor Sottsass!
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BTW: A couple of the pictures I posted may not have been of Memphis products
per se, but I included them because they were close enough to be relevant.
